My Big Infinity
by GraceKat
Summary: Augustus is a seventeen-year-old boy who had cancer one and a half years ago. He knows something big is going to happen. He just doesn't expect it to be in the form of his dead girlfriend's ghost.
1. chapter 1: my dead girlfriend

p style="text-align: center;"strongthis story is emThe Fault in Our Stars/em by John Green in Augustus Waters's POV./strong/p  
p style="text-align: center;"strong_/strong/p  
p style="text-align: left;""Please?" Isaac pleads./p  
p style="text-align: left;""Okay, just this once. But you owe me," I tell my friend./p  
p style="text-align: left;""Thanks bud," Isaac says, relieved that he doesn't have to go to torture by himself./p  
p style="text-align: left;""No problem," I say, trying not to regret my hasty choice./p  
p style="text-align: left;"We get into my car and I drive through our little Indiana-town to the Episcopal Church where Support Group takes place while Isaac obsesses over his over-obsessed girlfriend, someone named Monica. I zone out because I don't want to hear the details. Instead I think about how much I'm dreading Support Group. I also wonder why he puts up with it-as he hates it enough./p  
p style="text-align: left;"I park in the small parking lot, and Isaac and I jump out of the car. We enter the pathetic church and make our way up the short flight of stairs to what Isaac calls the Literal Heart of Jesus. At the top of the stairs is a table with dried-out cookies and lemonade./p  
p style="text-align: left;"A girl is standing at the table, facing away from me. She has short brown hair, and her build-slender and a bit short. How could this be real? Caroline's been dead for a year. I must be seeing things./p  
p style="text-align: left;"Because she's the ghost of my dead girlfriend./p 


	2. chapter 2: her

She spins around, noticed that she was being watched. She looks guilty of something and embarrassed and meek. Scared, too. The ghost of my dead girlfriend is definitely scared. She looks away out of the window, wishing for an escape. I can just tell. She looks so perfect. So innocent. Her eyes dart to mine and they meet for less than a second before her eyes flicker away from me.

She tilts her oxygen cart onto its wheels and pulls it to an empty seat in the middle of the Literal Heart of Jesus. Isaac sits next to her, and I sit on the other side of Isaac. She glances at me again. I can't help but stare at her. Her eyes dart away from mine again. She pulls out her phone and checks the time: 4:59.

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference," a middle-aged guy says.

"Patrick," Isaac whispers to me.

I still can't turn away from Caroline's ghost.

She looks at me, her cheeks starting to turn pink. She stares at me with a slight intensity. I turn away, the intensity making me a bit nervous. When I turn back to her a second later, she flicks her eyebrows at me to indicate that she won. I give a slight shrug.

"Isaac, perhaps you'd like to go first today. I know you're facing a challenging time," Patrick says, turning towards Isaac.

"Yeah, I'm Isaac. I'm seventeen. And it's looking like I have to get surgery in a couple weeks, after which I'll be blind. Not to complain or anything because I know a lot of us have it worse, but yeah, I mean, being blind does sort of suck. My girlfriend helps, though. And friends like Augustus." He nods toward me. "So, yeah," Isaac continues, "there's nothing you can do about it."

"We're here for you, Isaac," Patrick says. The rest of the group echoes his words in monotone.

A bunch of other kids share. I don't pay attention-they have no meaning to me. After a while, it's my turn.

"My name is Augustus Waters. I'm seventeen. I had a little touch of osteosarcoma a year and a half ago, but I'm just here today at Isaac's request," I say.

"And how are you feeling?" Patrick asks.

"Oh, I'm grand." I smile, and add, "I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend."

After a few more people, it's her. Caroline's ghost.

"I'm Hazel. I'm sixteen. Thyroid with mets in my lungs. And I'm okay."

Hazel. The ghost of my dead girlfriend is Hazel.


	3. chapter 3: oblivion

The rest of Support Group is torture: Patrick drones on about battles won and lost, "inspiration", and what is supposed to be comforting words. Neither Hazel nor I speak until Patrick asks me a question: "Augustus, perhaps you'd like to share your fears with the group."

"My fears?" I ask, a bit startled by the suggestion.

"Yes," Patrick answers.

"I fear oblivion. I fear it like the proverbial blind man who's afraid of the dark."

"Too soon," Isaac says.

"Was that insensitive? I can be pretty blind to other people's feelings," I ask.

Isaac is laughing, but Patrick says, "Augustus, please. Let's return to _you_ and _your _struggles. You said you fear oblivion?"

"I did," I answer.

"Would, uh, would anyone like to speak to that?" Patrick asks, looking like he's lost.

She tentatively raises her hand. I wonder what she' s going to say.

"Hazel!" Patrick says relieved.

She looks at me without flinching. "there will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no more human beings remaining to remember anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this, will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does."

I can sense that she's trying to hurt me-or scare me. But it doesn't.

There was a long period of silence. I smiled. "Goddam. Aren't you something else."


End file.
